What follows is the text of a talk delivered at the 2018 MLA Annual Convention for a panel, “Varieties of Digital Humanities,” organized by Alison Booth and Miriam Posner. Marisa Parham, Alan Liu, and Ted Underwood were the other speakers. (Howard Ramsby was also scheduled to present, but he was unable to attend because of the blizzard). Ted’s remarks can also be found on his website. *** I don’t have much time, so I’ll get right to the point— The question I want to explore today is this: what do…read more

What follows is the text of my talk at the 2017 MLA Annual Convention, slightly modified for the web. I spoke on a panel that showcased new forms of nineteenth-century digital scholarship. (Also featured were Mark Algee-Hewitt and Annie Swafford). An essay-length version of the talk is in the works, but since I’m heads-down on my book manuscript at the moment, I’m posting my remarks here. NB: If you’d like to read some of the more design-oriented work I’ve done on the subject, please see my paper from the 2016 IEEE VIS…read more

What follows is the transcript of my talk, “Visualization as Argument,” presented at the Genres of Scholarly Knowledge Production conference held at the Umea University HUMlab in December 2014. The talk is adapted from an essay-in-progress about the theoretical work of some of the earliest data visualization designers in the United States, who also happened to be pioneering educators and champions (to varying degrees) of women’s rights. My research is concerned, most generally, with the cultural and critical dimensions of data visualization. I’m at work on a book about the history of data…read more

Last week, I traveled to Umea, Sweden, to give a talk on feminist data visualization at Umea University’s HUMlab. The abstract for this talk is as follows (slides are below): Data visualization is not a recent innovation. Even in the eighteenth century, economists and educators, as well as artists and illustrators, were fully aware of the inherent subjectivity of visual perception, the culturally-situated position of the viewer, and the power of images in general—and of visualization in particular—to convey arguments and ideas. In this talk, I examine the history of data…read more

What follows is the talk I delivered on behalf of the TOME project team at the Digital Humanities 2014 conference. We’re in the process of writing up a longer version with more technical details, but in the interim, feel free to email me with any questions. NB: For display purposes, I’ve removed several of the less-essential slides, but you can view the complete slidedeck here. Just over a hundred years ago, in 1898, Henry Gannett published the second of what would become three illustrated Statistical Atlases of the United States. Based on…read more

Exciting news! My essay, “Dinner Table Bargains: Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and the Senses of Taste,” about Jefferson, Madison, the foods they ate, and why we should care, is now available in print and online in Early American Literature 49.2. Please email me if you’d like to read the essay but don’t have a subscription to Project Muse.

Last spring, I spent a month in the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, conducting research for my food book. I recently wrote a blog post about that experience– and the experience, more generally, of conducing archival research. It’s now been posted on the NYPL blog, and you can read it here. Image at left: Lydia Maria Child, Letter to Ellis Loring, March 9th, 1842. Source: NYPL MssCol 532.

On March 15th, 2014, I participated in a roundtable, “Networks and the Commons,” at C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists biennial conference. My co-panelists were Ryan Cordell, Ellen Gruber Garvey, Kristen Doyle Highland, and Joanne van der Woude. (Ed Whitley provided the opening remarks). What follows are my remarks, slightly expanded and reformatted for the web. — In bringing together these roundtable contributions, Ed [Whitley] observed that our shared assumption is that “the commons as a category of analysis is the product of networks.” This is true– I think– and in the…read more

On Thursday, February 27th, 2014, I traveled to Yale to speak about the uses of data visualization, past and present. Trip Kirkpatrick, of the Instructional Technology Group, wrote up a great summary of my talk on the DH Working Group website. (My slides are embedded in that post). I’m hoping to write up a more formal version of my remarks soon.